


maps upon my skin (and they all lead me back to you)

by alyzeryn



Series: sapphires in cobalt blue [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Beauregard Lionett-centric, But this is primarily about Beau, F/F, Jester will show up eventually, Original Character(s), Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-01-23 23:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21328753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyzeryn/pseuds/alyzeryn
Summary: Beau is four when they first show up.And they follow her for the rest of her life. Marks upon her skin appearing without rhyme or reason - sometimes a comfort, sometimes more trouble than they're worth.All the time, the only constant Beau can rely on.(5 +1 Things, set in various points in Beau's life)
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: sapphires in cobalt blue [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604920
Comments: 53
Kudos: 402





	1. Chapter 1

Beau was four when they first showed up.

Sitting at the dinner table, listening to her parents make dull small talk across the way, she could only count the seconds until she could be excused. One of her hands picked at her now cold food; the other plucked at the lace that barely brushed against her wrist but to her mind felt like sharp, little teeth gnawing against the delicate skin. It was as her fingernails discreetly unraveled the rich, offensive material and discarded the broken threads underneath the table that she noticed it: a splotch of dark green just beneath the cuff of her dress.

At first, Beau thought it was just another bruise. She had plenty of those and finding one she couldn’t remember getting wouldn’t have been that brig of a surprise. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time. But there was not pain as she pressed down on it, nothing to say that a bruise was or had ever been there. It was just… green.

It kind of looked like paint.

Beau wondered if there were anymore hiding beneath her hideous dress.

Slowly, careful not to attract her parents’ attention, she switched hands.

There was another splotch. Well, more like a smear, and it was bright pink instead of green and on the back of her hand. But Beau could see more of it trailing underneath her skin and vanishing beneath the restricting fabric.

And now waiting for permission to be excused didn’t sound all that appealing anymore.

With as much restraint as she could muster, Beau pushed herself back from the table, the chair making a horrid squeal on the marble, and hopped down onto the ground. She brushed the wrinkles out of her dress, the material grabbing and scratching against her hands, before looking up into her parents’ eyes.

They watched her intently, one with curiosity marred by displeasure and the other with familiar and well-masked frustration.

Beau made sure to stifle her smile at her father’s furrowed brow and clenched jaw before asking if she could be excused for the evening. She must have spent too long in the sun today and was awfully drowsy and with a bit of a headache, and perhaps some early rest was what she needed to-

Before she had finished the lame excuse she had just conjured up, her father sighed and waved his hand wearily in the air.

“Go.”

She sprinted out of the room before he had gone back to his lackluster dinner, the folds of her dress bunched up in her little fists and her bare feet slapping freely against the marble hallways, up staircase, and over plush rug until she reached her room. Kicking the door shut behind her and ignoring the footsteps of what’s sure to be her maid hurrying after her as best as she could, Beau stripped out of her dress, uncaring of the tears she heard in her haste, and tossed it across the room. Her stockings and most of her underclothes joined it as well until she stood almost naked in front of the mirror. And in the fading light of day through her window she saw it: a kaleidoscope of colors painted freely, with no pattern or reason, across her brown skin.

Splotches and smears crawled up her legs, pattered across her stomach and swept over her side, and strutted out over her collarbone and arms until she was a patchwork of paint. As more continued to show up even as she watched. A few flecks suddenly spattered across her calf; a yellow handprint splashed across her elbow like a small star, so small and pudgy that it barely covered her entire elbow; and a collection of blue fingertips, like someone was tapping their face, appeared one after another on her cheek.

She was enraptured by the collage and twisted around to catch every bit of pain that appeared on her skin in the mirror.

Beau would have watched them forever it if had not been for her maid gently knocking before entering the room, followed by a deep, disappointed sigh.

“Miss Beauregard-”

“I didn’t do it!” she instinctively shouted, jumping and covering herself with her arms is if they could hide the vibrant paint swatches. “I swear, I didn’t! They just showed up and-”

Her explanation, not that it was much to begin with when she didn’t even know where it was going, was cut short but a firm but clearly exhausted hand. Her maid’s other hand pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes clenched shut as another heavy sigh weighed down her shoulders. “I understand that you are unhappy with your parents, Beauregard, but you could try and bit a bit more respectful. Lady Lionett paid a heavy price for that beautiful dress; the least you could do is show some gratitude and __not__ cover it in paint the first chance you got.”

“But I hate this stupid dress! It itches.” She kicked it for good measure, and the multitude of skirts practically fluttered away. “And I didn’t paint this on myself! It just-”

Her maid snorted derisively, a familiar sound that made Beau flush with anger and embarrassment. At the washbasin sitting in the corner of Beau’s room, her maid soaked and wrung out a handkerchief before making her way over to her young charge. “And here I thought you were a better liar than that, Miss Beauregard.”

Before Beau could splutter out a response,her maid grabbed her by the wrist where the first green mark had appeared and tugged her forward, nearly knocking her off her feet completely. A damp cloth smelling faintly of the lavender soap a friend of her father’s had gifted to the house scrubbed vigorously at her cheek.

Unsurprisingly, the paint was still there.

Humming confusedly, her maid spat into the handkerchief, locked a struggling Beau against her chest, and tired again with the other cheek.

Nothing.

“What in the heavens did you get yourself into, child?”

Knowing the truth would get her nowhere, a well crafted lie even less so, Beau just kept quiet as her maid tried and failed and tried and failed and __tried__ and __failed__ to get any of the paint off. And when nothing worked, it was off to the washroom, with Beau being dragged behind her and the colors hidden beneath a fluffy robe.

Looking back, Beau wished she had had the good sense to run off when her maid was unlocking the door, juggling another bathrobe, a few towels, and a basket of the same lavender soap that tickled Beau’s nose, and not in a good way. Instead, she had stared at her temporarily free wrist, watching a lighter green splotch almost completely cover the darker one. She traced around it delicately with her fingertips, awed by it in a way only the view from the roof of her house seemed to match, and she wondered where it had come from. She hadn’t been playing in paint today; she didn’t even own paints for the exact (and accurate) reason that she’d end up painting herself as well as everything else around her. And no paints she had ever seen could magically appear on someone’s skin at random. No, this was something else, something __magical__, and Beau was excited to start figuring out what.

But now, she was busy trying to keep soap from getting into her eyes as her maid poured water over her head.

“You’re lucky your mother didn’t find you like this before I did, Miss Beauregard. Or, heavens forbid, your father. They’d have a fit!” her nurse admonished as she scrubbed Beau’s skin raw. She exchanged soap after soap until eh mingling scents left Beau lightheaded and mentally pleading that her maid would let it go so she could go back to her room and sleep off her now very real headache.

But other than the light makeup her mother had forced on her and a bit of dirt in her hair, the paint stubbornly remained on Beau’s skin, as pristine as when they had first appeared.

“How…?” Sitting on the bench beside the tub, she looked to Beau, as if the girl had any better idea than she did.

Beau just shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know. They just kinda showed up.”

Her maid nodded, her eyes distant in a way that Beau recognized as her thinking face. An icy pit dropped into her stomach as the inevitable words left her maid’s mouth: “We’ll have to tell your mother.”

“No!”

The word was out father than Beau could snap her mouth shut.

And the look her maid sent her chilled her to her very core.

“Miss Beauregard-”

“I cant clean it up! I promise!” Snatching the cloth from her maid’s hand, Beau scrubbed furiously at her skin until it was raw and read and __hurt__. But she kept going as tears blurred her vision and bits of her skin started to tear as she dragged her short nails against the paint, desperate to get it off.

In the back of her mind, she knew it was pointless. Not amount of scrubbing had even smudge the paint; what good would Beau scratching at it do? All she was doing was giving herself more injuries for her maid to cover up later. But that was all washed away in the panic of making sure that her mother never knew about the magic paint, ever. She couldn’t know. If she knew and she didn’t know how to fix it, she’d tell Beau’s dad and then he would get involved and then Beau would get in trouble again and then-

A pair of hands, calloused and wrinkled but oh so gentle, pulled her own away, stopping her frantic scrabbling and her racing mind in their tracks.

Beau looked up into the eyes of her maid with a sniffle.

“I’m sorry, Miss Beauregard,” she said, not really looking sorry at all, “but I’m afraid we have no choice. We have to get your mother involved. She’ll know what to do about this better than I do.”

Beau resisted the urge to scream ‘__No, she won’t!’__ It wouldn’t get her anywhere except a slap on the wrist, and that was if her maid was feeling sympathetic. So she sat there, knees drawn up to her chest in the cooling water as her maid called for someone to deliver a message to Lady Lionett and, y__es, it was important, and no, Beauregard didn’t break anything. Please just bring Lady Lionett here as soon as possible. Thank you.__

She did not move when she heard her maid sit back beside her and anxiously tidy up the room.

She did not move when a gentle knock on the door heralded her mother’s arrival. Her maid stood, adjusted her skirt, and went to the door. Their voices were hushed as they discussed the paint, but Beau could hear her mother growing angrier the longer they spoke.

Beau remained where she was, arms wrapped around her legs, until her mom swept into the room, all elegance and grace even with that thunderous expression on her face.

“Beauregard, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she grumbled into her knees.

Her mother’s hand shot out and snagged her ear, dragging her head up until Beau’s teary eyes met her own. It was a testament to her own spite that Beau did not let out a sound, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“Speak up, Beauregard,” Lady Lionett demanded, stone faced. “A lady doesn’t mumble. Now, once again, __what did you do__?”

“I don’t know!” Beau yelped. “The paint just showed up!”

“That’s impossible.”

Before Lady Lionett could do anything else, and Beau was not sure if she wanted to know just what else her mother would do, her maid’s voice cut through the tension in the room like a welcome breeze on a sweltering day. With her mother’s attention on her, Beau slipped out of her grasp and sunk back low into the tub. She made sure her hair was in front of her ears too, just in case.

“Lady Lionett, I cannot confirm whether Miss Beauregard speaks the truth, but I can say that there is something… off about the paint. It won’t come off. At all.”

A pregnant pause.

“And she said they just showed up?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Another.

Lady Lionett inhaled deeply, held it for a few seconds, and then exhaled slowly before speaking in that same, no nonsense tone she gave particularly flaky work associates. It brooked no argument, and even trying was a waste of time and breath. She knew what she wanted and would not be convinced otherwise.

“Get her dressed, make sure every inch of skin is covered,” she ordered. “Use makeup for the marks on her face. Dow whatever you have to do; just make sure it’s gone by tomorrow. If it’s what I think it is, I don’t want anyone to know. Lest they find a way to use it against us.”

The last part was spoken in a hush, but Beau had always had keener ears than her parents thought.

She turned that phrase over in her mind as her maid dried and dressed her. __Lest they use it against us - use what?__ Beau had never heard of paint magically appearing on someone’s skin before, and she had no clue why it could be so dangerous to her family’s business. Because what else would her mother be talking about? The business was all that mattered in her house, and with as powerful as Lionett Winery was it had earned more than its fair share of enemies.

But why would any of them care about paint?

Soon, she’s dressed in the most restrictive clothing her maid could find, and her face feels heavier with how much makeup was on it.

Not that either of them lasts long. As soon as the house drifts off to sleep, Beau stripped down and wiped the makeup from her face with the corner of her blanket. Slipping out of bed, she tiptoed over to her mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of the paint before heading to sleep.

Most of them were gone, but she managed to catch the last few being cleaned away by some unseen force until her skin was as clean as it had been earlier. Cleaner, even.

In the still silence of the night, she traced her fingertips over her wrists, her sides, her face, her arms, as if she could bring back the paint by will alone. But her skin remained empty. Her mind, on the other hand, was anything but, and as she slipped back under her covers and settled in for a restless sleep, Beau wondered just where the paint had gone.

She wondered if it would ever come back.


	2. Chapter 2

Beau was ten when she decided the marks were more trouble than they were worth.

And class was _draaaaaaaagiiiiiing_ on.

Class always seemed to drag on to Beau.

The voice of her teachers inevitably became formless droning in the back of her mind. Her notes swirled into meaningless nonsense. Her surroundings faded into a hazy background. All she could focus on was the way her uniform scratched against her skin and the way she endlessly shifted in her seat to try and relieve it, how the ball of her food bounced against the ground, the way the her pencil twirled around her fingertips, and the agonizingly slow passage of time as she waited for her class to be over. Then she could stand up and stretch until the next teacher came it, and then do it all over again until the end of the day.

It was _excruciating._ And Beau hated every second of it.

_Why do I have to in this stupid school anyway?_ Beau knew she was smarter than most of her classmates. And none of her teachers knew how to teach anyway. She never understood them, so she ended up teaching herself anyway and doing a better job than any of them. Beau didn’t need to go to school. She just needed the books and the freedom to explore as she wanted. Was that too much to ask?

According to her mother, her tutors, her father, and her parents’ business partners, yes.

Which was why she had been stuck there in the first place.

Beau barely resisted the urge to scream when she saw the shadows on the ground. _Two. Hours. Left._

Two hours until classes were over. Then she had her music lessons. And _then_ she had to go to the jewelers her father worked with because apparently ten years old was the perfect age to start determining what Beau wanted to do for the rest of her life.

_Then_ she could finally go home.

She dragged her hands down her face before grabbing her pencil and pretending to take notes so her teacher wouldn’t call on her to answer a question. Nonsense doodles and random patterns bloomed over her paper between the few notes she _had_ written down, but those were quickly stifled by overgrown vines that twined around the letters.

So intent on her drawings, she almost missed the mark that appeared on the back of her hand.

She reached out to grab another pencil after grinding the tip of her first down to a useless nub and froze at the purple mark against her skin.

It was dark and vibrant, a beautiful shade of purple that stood out sharply against her brown skin but complimented it beautifully, like her mother’s favorite dress. Beau had never understood what her mother meant when she said that - “_You look like that color was made for you, Butterfly. Boys will be throwing themselves at your feet one day.”_ \- but staring at the kiss mark, she thought she was starting to.

Warmth flooded Beau body at the sight of it. She had missed the marks. After the incident when she was younger, Beau’s mother had made sure to keep every inch of skin hidden beneath cloth and makeup. So she had tottered around her house and the rest of Kamordah like her mother’s little doll, shoulders heavy with the weight of her clothes and her shame. Every time she tried to adjust the fabric so it was a little more comfortable or try and scrape some of the makeup off her face so it didn’t feel like it was eating into her skin, her hands were trapped at her mother’s side, a cloying smile against Lady Lionett’s face as if she wanted the whole world to see just how proud she was of her daughter. So proud, in fact, that she held Beau’s hand no matter where they went in a grip that was just a little passed too tight.

Beau flexed her hands, still feeling the memory of the bruises.

In school, though, there was no Lady Lionett. No maid beholden to her parents’ every will. And while Beau had no doubt the teachers were under her family’s thumb, there was only so much they could do. It’s not like they could force Beau to wear gloves with her already conservative uniform.

And so Beau discreetly stared down at the mark and gingerly glided her finger over it, almost positive she could feel the kindness and warmth from whoever it was the mark came from.

Glancing sharply out of the corner of her eye, making sure no one was paying attention to her, Beau frantically scribbled on her paper until she had a small pile of graphite shavings. She dipped her pinky into the dust and drew a small heart next to the kiss mark.

Nothing happened afterward. It never had on the few rare times Beau had been alone with the marks. Not that she expected it to change now, but she liked the addition of her own little mark. It made it hers.

There was so little nowadays she could calls hers.

After a few moments, the kiss mark lingering, she went back to her messy drawings, letting it settle comfortably in the the corner of her mind for now. It filled her with comfort and warmth as the day dragged on, one teacher replacing another replacing another, until it was nearing the end of the day. She was already packed and thrumming with energy at that point, practically halfway out of her seat and shooting the door to the room furtive glances. She may have been the furthest from the front of the room, but that didn’t mean she was ever the last out of class. She was rarely even the second of third out of the room, usually down the hall before her teachers had a chance to finish dismissing the class.

Today just had to be the exception though.

As she was slowly looping her bag over her shoulder, something snapped against her hand. Beau hissed and tugged it against her chest, her skin already reddening and swelling, and she looked up with a snarl and a curse ready for whoever hit her.

Her words died with a choke as she met her teacher’s icy stare.

“Miss DuMont,” Beau muttered, looking down and to the side.

“Miss Lionett,” her teacher replied, voice firm. “Care to tell me what is _that_ on your hand?”

Beau froze.

Of _course_ her teacher would notice. It wasn’t like she had made any effort to hide it, and Beau was sure that her parents had told her teachers to keep a close eye on her and paid a pretty copper to make sure their demands were met. Until then, Beau had managed to slide beneath their stare, exhausting them with her stubborn and contradictory nature. Now, they had an incentive to pay attention to their least favorite student.

Now, they had their prize.

Beau cursed at herself. She was supposed to be smarter than this.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a hand snatching out and grasping her wrist. She yelped as her teacher jerked her arm into the air, nearly dislocating her arm and almost dragging Beau out of her seat entirely. Not that that really mattered to her. What mattered was that her mark was in the air for her entire class to see. The kiss mark that was - _had been_ \- hers along with the little heart she had drawn on.

She wanted to scream, to thrash, to kick at her teacher and demand to let her go, to _give it back! It’s not yours! Give it back!_

But Beau just sat there, face burning with embarrassment and her other hand digging its nails painfully into her thigh. It was better than the pain she felt at hearing her classmates’ whispers.

“Everyone, this is a good learning experience for you all,” her teacher called out over her classmates’ snickers. “Do not get involved in things you don’t fully understand, class. Miss Lionett here has decided to mock something sacred and beautiful-”

_I don’t even know what it is!_ Beau shouted in her mind. On the outside, she struggled to keep from crying.

“-and is now dealing with the consequences of it,” continued Miss DuMont. She released Beau’s small wrist, and Beau collapsed into her chair with a huff. She rubbed at it angrily while trying to ignore the jeers coming from all around her.

“Do be aware that I will be informing your parents of this, Miss Lionett.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you will.”

The fiery glare Miss DuMont sent her way as she returned to the front of the class was not worth the small bit of pride Beau felt at her response. It was only a taste of what would she had to expect once she got home, and Beau knew her parents’ ire would be far worse than anything her teachers could send her way.

Without waiting for her teacher’s dismissal, Beau stood up and stomped from the room, laughter trailing after her until the door slammed shut behind her.

She stormed all the way home, her anger turning from her teacher, to her classmates, to herself, and, finally, to the kiss mark on the back of her hand.

That stupid mark was what got her into trouble in the first place. It was the same when she was four, and nothing had changed in the years since. Always in trouble, always under the keen eye of her parents or her maids or her teachers, always forced to hide the marks like it was something to be ashamed of.

And maybe it was.

Nothing good had come from them so far.

And that was what Beau’s anger chewed on when she made it home and isolated herself in her room. Throwing herself onto her vanity bench, Beau glared down at the kiss mark. It was just as beautiful and pristine as it had been when it first showed up.

And Beau hated it.

Grabbing the pot of makeup that had been gathering dust until now, she scooped out a handful of it and smeared it over the back of her hand. It was thick and heavy and cold, and disgust curled around her spine and settled in her core at the sensation. More than five years of fighting her mother on wearing makeup and now Beau was putting on willingly.

Well, not willingly.

But it would be easier than dealing with the marks.

She didn’t even know where they came from or _why_ they were showing up, only that they existed to cause more trouble than Beau wanted to deal with. She already caused herself enough problems in her life just by nature of being herself; she didn’t need whatever the hell came with the marks too.

It was too much.

Beau didn’t realize she was crying until the first teardrop hit her hand and washed the makeup away. Beneath it, the purple mark.

“Why’re you here?” she asked. Her voice was small, afraid, and broke the silence of the room louder than any scream would have. “Where’d you even come from?”

There was no answer. Not that Beau expected one, but talking aloud made things a little easier. Sighing, she wiped away the makeup with the hem of her uniform before changing into her pajamas and curling into bed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it… I’m just confused, and I wanna know why me? And did you get my heart? I hope you did…”

She talked to the mark into the late hours of the night, ignoring her maid and then her parents as they called her down to dinner, then asked if she wanted food brought up to her, and then wished her goodnight. She told it about her day, about how she felt when she saw it, about the first time she had seen the marks. She tried not to cry as she told it about what had happened during class. And when Beau wiped her faced dry, she could almost convince herself she could feel warm, tender lips - kinder than her mother’s had ever been - pressing against her face where her hand was.

And as Beau drifted off to sleep, the kiss mark tucked against her face, the kiss mark was wiped away, and a small, blue heart took its place.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The words in plain Italics during the conversation is Jester
> 
> The words in 'Italics' during the conversation is Beau

Beau was sixteen when they finally wrote _back._

It was an exciting moment, one that, when Beau looked back, was a huge defining moment of her life. Years later, when she would stare down at the marks that littered her arms and neck and wonder how she ever got so lucky, her mind would travel back to that one day, where that _one_ person finally wrote back. In truth, it had probably been one of the best days of Beau’s life.

If only it hadn’t coincided with what she considered one of the _worst _days of her life.

And that day stared with being ripped from her girlfriend and thrown into jail, only to then immediately be bailed _out_ of jail, only to _then _be thrown into a cellar as soon as she got home.

“_No one can know that Beauregard Lionett was imprisoned,”_ her mother had said as they had headed back to the manor. Her gloved hand had been tenderly wiping the dirt and blood from Beau’s face, and her voice had been soft. Shouting and a slap across the face would have hurt less than her mother’s faux concern. _“And after being found with a known criminal, no less. Imagine the scandal.”_

No “You must have been so frightened.”

No “Are you okay, dear?”

Just “Imagine the scandal.”

And Beau could not find it in her heart to be remorseful about the fact that she shoved her mother away right after that and tried to jump from the carriage. How could she be, when she wasn’t even good enough to be doted over?

_Just good enough to be the center of a scandal apparently, _she groused, kicking at the dirt and nearly missing the water bucket in the corner of the room. Not that she had really wanted to be doted over. She hated being the center of attention. But she had hoped that even her parents would…

Well, that was her first problem, wasn’t it? She had _hoped_.

And hope had gotten her nothing except a girlfriend who would probably vanish under “mysterious circumstances” and a nice, frigid former wine cellar beneath her family’s manor where she’d stay for however long her parents deemed appropriate.

“Or they’ll probably just forget about me,” she said to no one. “It’d be convenient. ‘_Heir to big winery regretfully perished - Parents choose to name wine after her.’_ It’ll be a big hit and they’ll buy a newer, better kid with all the gold. And they’ll never have to worry about _them_ being the family disgrace because they’ll be a perfect little angel and do everything _Mommy _and _Daddy_ tell them. They’ll inherit the winery, and no one will ever remember Beauregard Lionett.”

She tried to pretend that it hadn’t been betrayal that made her voice catch on the end.

The malice, though? That could stay.

With a huff, Beau threw herself onto the floor. It was getting late, judging by the little light that came into the cellar, and Beau doubted she’d be getting dinner. And since she had already bloodied her knuckles and toes attacking the door, probably breaking a few in the process, and scouring the cellar for anyway out, which she did not find, all that was left was to wait.

Wait for what, Beau had no idea. According to her father’s servant as he had led Beau to the cellar, surrounded by a retinue of guards previously designed to keep Beau safe and were instead there to keep _everyone else_ safe, this had been the “last straw.” And Beau had no idea what that meant anymore. She had broken plenty of “last straws” in her lifetime, but none of them had landed her in what was essentially house arrest. Probably her mother’s doing.

Apparently, her father meant it this time, and Beau doubted anything her mother said could get her out of this one. That, or her mother had been in complete agreement and now they were just plotting on how to get rid of her.

Keeping her in a cellar until the world forgot about her didn’t seem to be the _worst_ idea. Not the most creative, but not the worst. Not that Beau’s opinion really mattered because, if it was up to her, she’d be let out and ditch the Lionett Manor altogether. Everyone would win, but that would ruin her parents’ punishment so that was out of the question.

_So what’s going to happen to me_?

That fact that she had no clue scared her.

Before her anxiety could feed on that fear, send her mind spiraling down more and more ridiculous ideas, she hit her head against the wall. It hurt, but it definitely kept her present, even if it did mean that she was bored out of her mind. But she’d take boredom over self-destructive anxiety any day.

An hour passed. Then two. Then it was dark and she must have fallen asleep at some point because suddenly there was a torch where there hadn’t been, flame offering feeble light flickering in the night breeze that came through what could only graciously be called a window.

And in that dim light, her eye caught something on her forearm. Rich red against dirt stained brown, vibrant green, and golden lines along the edges tying it all together - it was a rose.

Beau could not stop herself from smiling down at it. Or the warmth that seemed to chase away the chill of the cellar. She had watched whoever was on the other end of those drawings go from abstract smudges to silly doodles to radiant drawings that Beau thought should be in a gallery, and was oddly proud of their progress. Was it weird to be proud of someone she had never met? Probably, but the only one who could’ve had a problem with it was herself, and she didn’t.

The rose was not the first either. Hidden beneath her shirt and swirling over her shoulder and dancing across her collarbone, golden filigree shimmered along her skin. It had showed up in the early hours of the morning, before Tori woke up, and Beau had spent hours watching it grow and unfurl in the pale light of dawn. She had twirled and spun her arm around, growing giddy as she watched it glimmer and sparkle like diamonds were embedded into her skin.

Not even Tori waking up and pressing a kiss to her shoulder could match the all-encompassing _warmth_ the drawings gave her. There was no other way to describe it; the sight of it just made her warm and safe and _loved_ in a way she had never experienced it.

And it was the same now as she watched the golden lines shine in the flickering firelight.

Smiling (_like an idiot_), Beau tipped over some of the water from the bucket onto the ground, scooped up some mud with her finger, and drew a small heart next to the rose. Like she had that day long ago.

There was a brief pause where Beau was just going to let her hand drop and figure out someway to relieve her boredom, but then the rose vanished, messily wiped away, and slanted, beautiful penmanship took its place.

_Ohmygosh! You’re real!?_

She froze and glanced around herself as if she could find an answer to what was happening somewhere around her. But if there was some kind of explanation in four dirt walls, she couldn’t see it.

Before she could start trying to figure it out, the writing continued.

_Mamma and the Traveler told me you were real but I didn’t believe it but YOU ARE! I mean I shouldn’t have like doubted it ‘cause they’re so smart and Mamma knows everything about this so I feel kinda stupid but that doesn’t matter because OHMYGOSH-_

The words were wiped away before Beau could ask what the ‘this’ was that this person’s mom seemed to know everything about.

_I’m Jester! What’s your name?_

Confused but grinning, Beau picked up some mud, intent on writing her name, and froze with her finger hovering over her skin.

She didn’t know what was happening no matter how many books she had devoured regarding anything vaguely similar to the subject. The Fae seemed to be the one of the more popular theories, and dealing with the Fae had one rule you’d be foolish or damned to break: _never_ give your true name. Now Beau didn’t really believe it was the Fae that she was dealing with… but better safe than sorry, right?

_‘Sorry, Mom said not to give my name to strangers,’ _Beau wrote slowly. ‘_Call me B.’_

If her evasive answer bothered whoever was on the other side, it definitely didn’t show.

_Hi, B! It’s nice to meet you!_

_‘You too, Jes.’_

‘Jes’ wrote something one Beau’s arm that she would later call the closest thing to a written squeal and then a grinning face. _OHMYGOSH “JES” - I LOVE IT! I’m totally going to make everyone call me that now. Thanks, B!_

_‘No problem?’_

There was a dip in conversation and then, _Am I being too much? Sometimes Mamma tells me that there are people who won’t like me because they can’t handle me because I’m, like, really energetic and stuff. They like quiet and calm and I’m not really either or those. So am I too much for you? If I am I can totally tone it down a bit! I don’t mind!_

What?

Beau didn’t know how to respond to that.

She knew what it was like being “too much.” Her maids always told her that when she was much younger and had been sprinting recklessly down the hall, butt naked and covered in suds, but the words had been drowned in her overjoyed laughter. They’d told her when she had been six and broken her arm by trying to climb up to the roof to see the view of the city there for the first time, but she had been crying to hard to hear them. They’d told her when she had been thirteen and had just been returned to the manor after almost successfully escaping Kamordah in one of her dad’s wine shipments. That had been the first time it had struck, and the final hit it took for the flood of ‘Why am I too much?’ to crash over her.

It was in her mother’s eyes, the stiff lines of her father’s shoulders, the stares that followed her whenever her parents risked letting her out of the manor.

Beau was too much.

She’d always be too much.

But Jes, whoever they were, was just enough.

_‘If you were too much, I’d definitely let you know,_’ Beau responded. And then added, much softer, ‘_You’re good. I promise.’_

_Really?_

_‘Yeah, Jes. You’re great.’_

_Thanks, B._

_So what’re you doing? Like, I don’t know how this works but we’re talking and that’s SO COOL but like are you a real person talking to me or like a ghost? Or OR are you like the Traveler? Because that’d be super cool but I don’t know if the Traveler would like that too much. Did I tell you about him, by the way? He’s like my best friend and-_

The words cut off, and Beau frantically searched along her arms, her legs, even her stomach until “Jester” started writing again. This time the large, looping letter danced along Beau’s calf.

_Sorry, I had to change my hiding sport so Blude wouldn’t find me. But ANYWAY, yeah, the Traveler is super cool and he’s taught me how to be all sneaky and do magic and stuff! Are you like that? Can you teach me how to do cool shit too?_

…Okay, maybe Beau had to reconsider Jes being “too much.”

Who was Blude? And why didn’t Jes want whoever that was to find them? Was Jes in some kind of trouble? And the Traveler? Who in Exandria was that? That wasn’t the title of any god Beau knew about. Was it a new one? Or was that just one of Jes’s teachers? These questions chased each other around and around Beau’s head atop a thick layer of general confusion as she tried to parse what was really happening while convincing herself that this _was really happening_…

…_are you still there_?

…And Beau hadn’t responded yet.

‘_Shit, my bad. Uh, yeah I’m still here. And, no I can’t really teach you magic, sorry. But I guess I can show you how to punch stuff real good - I’m pretty decent at that. And climbing and running and shit.’_

_THAT’D BE SO COOL! I’d be like the best hide-and-seek player ever. Will you teach me?_

_‘Sure, Jes_.’

_Promise?_

_‘Yeah, I promise’_

Because what was one meaningless promise? Beau had already given her fair share.

She watched as Jes started drawing, to Beau’s eyes, nonsensical lines right beneath Beau’s response. It did not take long for the drawing to come together, and Beau surprised herself with a laugh when Jester finished it with a flourish and a little yellow heart: two pinkies, interlocked.

_I’m going to hold you to that, B._

Beau ran her fingers down the doodle reverently, her touch ghosting over the fine hairs along her calf. When she shifted, the ink or paint or whatever it was shone in the firelight, like it was still wet and Beau could smear it along her skin with one clumsy movement. She knew she couldn’t, but she was careful all the same.

‘_You’re a pretty good artist,’ _Beau told them. _‘That rose from earlier was amazing.’_

_THANK YOU SO MUCH!_ Followed by three hearts and then, _Do you want to see more?_

The words on her calf and arms were thoroughly wiped away before Jester started drawing again. Beau hastily cleaned her own words as well, giving Jester a fully cleaned slate to create on.

For what felt like hours, Beau watched as Jester painted murals along Beau’s body, leaving very little skin untouched. Her left arm was a radiant and overflowing garden of flowers, some of which Beau had never even seen, curling up over her shoulder and trailing up her neck (not that she could see it, but she was positive she could feel the cellar’s cool air on the wet paint). On her right arm, Beau could vaguely recognize the ocean near her hand; she had never seen the ocean before, but there were plenty of books on it and none of the illustrations matched the way the colors seemed to come to life on Beau’s arm in that dank cellar. As the ocean crawled up Beau’s arm, the green-blue shifted and darkened until it was the color of the night sky, and the moon and the stars and swirling nebulae danced over her upper arm, her shoulder, and stretched out over her collarbone. At Beau’s suggestion, Jes used the gold paint from earlier for the stars and flecks of sand on the back of her hand and to trace parts of the flowers.

Jester was just starting on something on Beau’s stomach that extended to curl around her ribs when she heard footsteps near the cellar.

Getting louder.

Drawing closer.

She jumped to her feet, making sure her shirt was pulled down to cover her stomach, just as the door swung open, and torchlight spilled into the room and silhouetted the person standing before her.

The were short, shorter than Beau, but that was all she could see.

“You wouldn’t happen to Beauregard Lionett, would you?” a softly accented voice asked.

“Who the fuck’s asking?”

There was a chuckle, low and amused, and it lit a fire in Beau’s gut that made her want to lash out. But she held herself tall and unyielding as the person finally stepped into the room and into the circle of light from the cellar’s dying torch.

It was a Halfling - Beau had interacted with enough of her father’s business partners to know that - but they weren’t dressed in the same stiff, uncomfortable clothes Beau had grown up with. Blue clothes draped over their lithe frame, wrapping around their chest and flung over their shoulder; and a grey belt was knotted firmly around their slim waist. The edges were embroidered with golden threat, matching the delicate golden chains that curled around their forearms and shins, vanishing into their clothes. Their clothes were loose but clearly made with _influence_ in mind. And when they smirked, their dark eyes glittering with something that had Beau loosening with familiarity, with the knowledge that this was someone _like her_, there was a hint of gold in their teeth.

“I am,” they replied. They pressed a hand to their chest and gave her a shallow bow. “Expositer Odina Underbough of the Cobalt Soul. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“...Sure. Why’re you here?”

At her terse reply, Odina nodded, like Beau was meeting and exceeding all their expectations. “I’m here at the request of a very… _Ignorant_ man and his wife.”

_My parents._

Beau scoffed as it all came together. “Of course, you are. So what? You’re here to beat the shit out of me? Make me disappear? Whatever it is, cut the bullshit and get on with it.”

_I’m so done with all of this_.

As if reading her mind, Odina’s smile, which had been civil and friendly but not overly kind, dropped, and their brow furrowed at Beau’s words.

“Your father contacted my organization in the hopes that we’d send someone to help you understand the importance of discipline. He hoped that we’ll teach how to become the unquestioning heir he hopes you can become, loyal to a fault.

“Like I said, your father is an ignorant man, and I disagree with him. There is a difference between discipline and blind obedience. And I think you know that, Beauregard. Which is why I’m here to offer you an opportunity to shuck off his expectations of blind obedience.”

“Does my father know about this ‘offer?’”

The corner of Odina’s mouth curled into a grin. “Does he need to?’

“But what about-?” Beau gestured to the people standing behind her, the ones still cloaked in shadow that she was sure she was not meant to notice.

Odine glanced behind her and whistled sharply, and the two figures slipped into the room and snapped to attention on either side of the door. They were also dressed in blue, their garb much darker but similar to Odina’s. Behind them, the hall was empty.

In Beau’s mind, Odina’s words and meaning and the look on their faces clicked into place. “My father doesn’t know you’re down here, does it?”

One of the figures in the shadows murmured something that sounded like ‘_Clever girl.’_ Beau nearly missed it under Odina’s words.

“In about five minutes, I’m sure even he will notice some of the retinue from the Cobalt Soul has mysteriously vanished in his manor, but he won’t know we were ever here. Neither will your mother or your servants or your neighbors. The only one who will know we were down here will be you… and it’s up to you if you want that knowledge to remain a regretful memory or not.

“If you accompany us, you will be trained in the ways of the Cobalt Soul. You will hone your body and your mind into lethal weapons, and you will have access to the greatest collection of knowledge this world has to offer. You will be beaten, broken, forced to push yourself to limits you were not aware even existed, and you will emerge stronger than you ever imagined.”

“And you’re offering _me_ this?”

Odina gestured to the empty room. “Do you see anyone else here?”

No, but that wasn’t Beau’s question. Even as Odina stared her down, waiting for an answer, Beau could not help but hear the voices of her parents and her servants in her ears. She was too much, would never amount to anything, was a disgrace to the Lionett name and would be lucky if she overcame that in her lifetime. She was loud, abrasive, so angry, and everything her parents wished she wasn’t. She was the terror of her teachers and the shame of her parents. She would never live up to the success of the Lionett name.

So she would have to make her own.

“I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the kudos and the kind comments! I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing this, and I can't wait to get to the next one. We're halfway through, ya'll!
> 
> I meant to get this chapter up much sooner, but life and job interviews got in the way. I plan on having Chapter 4 out before this week ends, and I hope I can stick to that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, there was meant to be a lot more Jester in this one but the chapter got away from me and it ended up being a lot of introspection from Beau and a lot of Beau and Odina talking. I liked how it turned out though, even if writing every word felt like pulling out a tooth lol

Beau was twenty when she learned what they were.

_But it’s not in any of those fucking books._ She punctuated her thought with a swift jab, a wide kick, and another punch that, if it had been a person would have taken them down instantly.

Instead, the bag just took all her hits, and Beau felt little to no satisfaction at that. She wanted something that hit _back_, something that made her think three, four, six steps ahead and have back up options for all of them. She wanted something to lay her out flat on her back and force her to get back up again despite every bruise, every cut, every painful breath that had spots swimming in her vision. She wanted something that didn’t make her _think_.

Because if she had time to think, she had time to regret.

Regret coming to the Cobalt Soul, where everything was unfamiliar and more than she expected. It was exciting and overwhelming all at the same time, and sometimes Beau wanted to sprint headfirst into everything at once and isolate herself in her cot until the buzzing under her skin was barely tolerable at the same time.

Regret leaving where everything was familiar but she _knew_ how to bend and break the rules and what to expect. She hated the Lionett Manor and everyone in it, but at least she _knew_ what would happen, could predict everyone’s reaction to her like clockwork.

Regret thinking that she could ever _consider_ going back ho-… to Kamordah. It wasn’t home. It had never been.

And, overall, regret not messaging ‘Jester’ since that day in the cellar. But Jester had messaged her every day since. She had asked her about her day, what she was doing, how she was feeling, her opinions about whatever new trick Jester had concocted - and Beau hadn’t responded once.

At first she had just been too busy between studying late into the night and having her ass handed to her during the day. Then it had been too late and she’d felt guilty about having never responded. And then she just…

Forgot. With everything being _so much_, it was hard to remember to eat most days, and so Jester and the warmth she had ridden in had just been pushed to the wayside.

And then the guilt returned, and it started the endless cycle of self-hatred.

Yet, without fail, Jester messaged her every morning. And that morning, seeing a ‘Hi, B!’ in her loopy, elegant handwriting with a smiley face on her wrist, Beau had made the decision to finally message her back _after_ she figured out why it was happening in the first place.

But she and her classmates were not allowed to research outside what her instructors required yet.

Thus, the punching bag. She preferred the physical aspect of her training over the books anyways, and she doubted anyone would actually notice her missing from the archive.

They had more important things to worry about than her.

Beau kept up a steady flurry of blows, hitting and kicking and twisting and dodging invisible enemies until sweat stung her eyes and her body pleaded for her to take a break. But she knew she could go further than that; it was the one part of her learning she really appreciated.

In the back of her mind, she registered someone calling her name, but it was drowned out by the sound of her fist hitting the punching bag.

They called again, and Beau missed it as the swing of her leg displaced the air around her.

There was a brief pause, and somewhere in beau’s subconscious she thought that whoever it was had left her to her training. But then a hand caught her wrist as it flew towards the punching bag, another braced firmly against her abdomen, and Beau found herself flying and hitting the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of her lungs and send a cloud of dust rising around her. As she coughed the dirt from her lungs, she cracked open her eyes to see the face of Expositer Odina staring down at her.

“Beauregard.”

“Expositer.”

“Shouldn’t you be in the Archive?” They held out a hand, which Beau took gratefully (and not without noticing how they glanced at Jester’s words on her wrist), and hoisted her to her feet. Their hands, small but strong, brushed the wrinkles and the dirt from her clothes and her skin. “I thought Archivists Zenoth and Hayell had the students for the day.”

“Yeah, well, they did….”

“And… you left?”

Beau glanced over to the side to escape Odina’s knowing stare, but they leaned over and met Beau’s eyes with that same, infuriating grin.

“Beauregard, just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see you.” Grabbing the cloth at Beau’s wrist, they guided her to sit on the ground beside them. They tore a piece of cloth from their robe and handed off to her, gesturing to her forehead and the sweat that was slowly rolling into her eyes. “Now, care to tell me _why_ you’re here instead of the Archives?”

_I wanted to find out what the hell’s going on with this Jester person._ Even as she thought it, Beau knew it sounded dumb. The instructors at the Cobalt Soul made it clear that they really didn’t care about what their students wanted. That wasn’t to say that they didn’t care _at all_; Beau knew plenty of her classmates had gone to some of their instructors with their fears, their worries, and had come back lighter in the way only tough but genuine love could do. But as for her own wants, their teachers had begun drilling into her head that, if they opposed what was important, their wants were not a priority at that moment.

That didn’t stop Beau from following her own interests.

“Beauregard,” Odina said softly, gently coaxing her from her thoughts, “you know you can talk to me, right?”

When Beau didn’t respond, they sighed and got to their feet. Brushing the dirt from their clothes, they moved to leave the training room, and Beau got up, prepared to be left alone to her training.

But Odina stopped at the door and glanced back over their shoulder at her. “_If you’re done with your training, I’d like to show you something,”_ they said in Halfling.

And _that_ caught Beau’s attention, and she hurried after them.

The halls were silent as Beauregard followed in Odina’s wake. Even though she had explored nearly every inch of where she was allowed to go, Beau tried to see as much of her surroundings as she could. It was still difficult to believe, even after four years, that she was away from Kamordah and in Zadash. More specifically, in the Cobalt Soul, with is awe-inspiring simplicity and the vastness of its campus. Not to mention just how different everyone was. Humans, Elves, Orcs, Halflings, and so many more shared the space, bearing a significant lack of unease that had marred Beau’s early life. It was so unlike Kamordah and the people Beau’s family had interacted with, and she loved it.

She would never tell anyone, but she truly did.

_“You’re very thoughtful today,”_ Odina remarked, and Beau’s head snapped down ton find them smiling at her over their shoulder. _“Could Archivist Hayell’s wisdom finally be getting to you?”_

Beau snorted. “How can anyone learn anything with-”

_“In Halfling please, Beauregard.”_

At once, the sense of familiarity, almost comfort, that came with Expositer Odina froze and cracked and climbed up her spine, drawing her shoulders back and tightening her jaw until it ached. She had heard those words more time than she cared to count, partnered with cold, distant eyes and a sneer. Along with the inevitable laughter that followed her as her tongue had tripped over the unfamiliar words, Halfling came with nothing but cruel memories and a painful twist in her gut that made her nauseated. She knew it better now, having spent time with Odina and around her classmates, but the soft syllables still brought up that familiar embarrassment.

“Why?” she snapped,

Odina cocked a confused eyebrow but refused to be baited by her tone. “Speaking more than one language is a valuable skill, a skill I believe everyone should possess, and you have a talent for languages that surpasses quite a few of your classmates. It’d a shame to let that gift go to waste.”

She took a deep breath. “_I’m not… good at it.”_

But Odina just smiled, and Beau almost bristled before they said, “_I think you’re doing just fine. Let me know if you’re struggling with a phrase. I’m more than happy to help.”_

Beau opened her mouth to say something - and she wasn’t sure if what would come out of her mouth would be angry or grateful - when slanted cursive caught her eye on Odina’s neck. It climbed out of the edge of her collar and curved around her throat and her over her jaw, curling to a stop behind her ear with a small heart.

“_You have, um, words too?”_ She gestured to the note Jester had sent her this morning.

_“A soulmark? Yes. Not what I’d call it, since it’s not really a single ‘mark,’ but I suppose it does the job.”_

Beau had them repeat the word a few times until it rolled off her tongue with ease: Soulmark.

_“It’s my wife,” _continued Odina. _“She tends to send me small notes throughout the day. Sometimes reminds to pick up something on my way home. Sometimes just something sweet, so I have a nice surprise at the end of the day. It’s… comforting, knowing we’re so connected. _

_“What does yours send you, Beauregard, if that’s not too personal to ask? You’re free to let me know if it is, and I’ll respect that.”_

But Beau had frozen on the word ‘Soulmark,’ tumbling around her head and dissecting it from every angle. In all her readings and all her research and all the answers that only seemed to circle around what she looked for, ‘Soulmark’ had never come up. And now that she had a word for it - just one simple word - Beau wondered how she could have possibly never come across it. Did she just not look hard enough?

_“What’s a soulmark?”_

Odina stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared up at Beauregard as if she was considering calling a healer to check her mental state. Their eyes flickered from the visible mark on Beau’s arm, up to her eyes, and back again.

“Okay, like-”

“_Halfling, Beaur-”_

“I don’t have the words in Halfling! Just let me do this in Common, please! And I’ll speak in nothing but Halfling for the rest of the day and tomorrow. _Please!”_

She was not sure if it was something in her face or her pleading tone that did it, but Odina nodded and waved at her to to continue.

“Thanks,” Beau sighed. “So, like, I know _what _they are in a literal sense but I don’t know, like, what the represent or whatever. I just know it’s there… I don’t know why though.”

“Did no one bother to explain them to you when they saw what it was? Clearly it’s a soulmark, and someone should have told you as soon as they recognized it. Did you parents not-?”

“You met my parents, right?” And now that Odina had put the thought into her mind, Beau could not remember a time when she had ever seen her mother or father having similar marks. Her mother rarely let any skin below her throat show, but Beau was sure she could have remembered seeing ink on her mother’s skin on those few nights where Lady Lionett decided to show her some affection. And Beau knew her father had written on himself before - she had seen him do it plenty of times when she had been in his office to hear him lecture about the importance of the family business - but it had never shown up on her mom. In fact, Beau had searched for it one day after “accidentally” spilling ink on her dad’s wrist. She had run to her mother, pretending to be frightened of her dad’s anger, and noticed that her wrist had been pristine when she had reluctantly taken Beau into her arms.

“If either of them had a soulmark, I’ve never seen it.”

Odina hummed thoughtfully and continued walking down the hall, Beau beside them.

“Does your other half know what a soulmark is? I assume it’s only one at the moment, since I don’t see anymore on you.”

“Who? Jester?”

“Ah, so they’re name is Jester - that’s very cute.” Odina chuckled as Beau cursed at herself under her breath. “Yes, does Jester know this is?”

“I mean-” Beau vaguely remembered Jester talking to her in that cellar, mentioning her mom and someone called the Traveler telling her about soulmarks. “-I guess? Like she said she does but she might be lying. She might even not be real. I’ve heard about, like, the Fae and stuff being able to do stuff like this.”

“And why would any Fae give you any name?” Odina countered. “Even if wasn’t her true name when she introduced herself to you, it’s become a true name now. No Fae would let that happen, and I’d know that from personal experience.”

Before Beau could unwrap that cryptic response, Odina stopped outside a wooden door carved with vines curling up around the doorway and wrapping around a pale green gem at the top. A line of ink, also pale green, stretched down from the doorway to a blooming flower in the center of it. And when Odina pressed her hand against it, it clicked and swung inward.

“After you, Beauregard.”

When Beau stepped in, she was surprised at how… _plain_ it was. A desk, a bookshelf that was mostly empty except for a few journals and knick-knacks, a couple plants, and a small table in the corner of the room with a jug and two glasses.

Odina guided Beau to the table before heading to the desk and pulling out ink and a brush from one of the top shelves. They pushed it in Beau’s direction when they returned, a gentle smile on their face.

“I think I understand why you weren’t in the Archives today,” Odina told her. “And you will be scolded for missing a lesson, but, if you’d like, I will speak to Zenoth and Hayell and maybe temper some of their frustration with you.

“But, in the meantime, I think you should speak with the other half of this bond you share. She may be able to give more pertinent information than any book we have in the Archive.”

Beau glanced back and forth between Odina’s face and the ink, searching for anything that told her this was more than a generous offer from a kind-hearted person. Because that’s what Odina was, even Beau could see that; but Beau that even the nicest person didn’t give something for nothing. There was something Odina must have wanted, but Beau could not see beyond the warmth in their stare, the softness in their face, the tenderness that Beau had never seen in her parents.

Slowly, Beau took up the brush, dipped it in the ink, and began to write.

_‘Hey, Jes. It’s been a while…’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, before ep 85: y'know I love this ship but it's okay if it's never made canon, like i guess i can live with the cute interac-
> 
> Me, post ep 85: V I N D I C A T I O N
> 
> Also, if you're interested, I made a tumblr! I don't have any of my writing up on it yet but I plan on getting to that along with some CR art (and I'll probably draw Odina at some point because I really like them). I'm at alyzeryn if you want to swing over there a give my, at the moment, really empty blog a follow


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, not a lot of Jester - which is to be expected because it IS centered on Beau - but this is the last chapter before we finally meet the talented tiefling herself! I'm already working on that chapter, and I'm really excited to post it.
> 
> In the meanwhile - there is a question in the notes at the bottom of this chapter? Kind of like a poll. If you would be willing to answer in a comment, I'd really appreciate it.
> 
> Also, Beau's conversation with Odina is entirely in Halfling.

Beau was twenty-four when she decided to find out who was on the other end.

_Hey, B, do you think we’ll ever meet each other?_

Beau stuffed all the pillows she had snagged from around the Cobalt Soul including her own underneath her blankets until it looked close enough to someone sleeping.

_What if we just kinda bumped into each other and didn’t know it, and then found out like when we’re hundreds of miles away? That would suck but then we’d get to try and find each other, like in my Momma’s love stories._

Slowly, with a speed and a grace Beau knew she had not had ten years ago, she stuffed the few belongings she had into her pack and slung it over her shoulder.

_It’s pretty lonely here. Momma says I should try to find you but… I don’t know. But I’d like to meet you! You seem really nice and super cool, and I think we’d be really good friends! I mean, I like to think we’re already friends. I like talking to you - you’re super nice and you listen to me talk about a lot of stuff I haven’t even told Momma. And I don’t really have a lot of friends other than the Traveler, so it’s nice having someone else to just talk about whatever with. But it’s not the same as talking to someone face to face, y’know? And I was thinking do you think, maybe, you’d want to meet me too? It’s okay if you don’t…_

She slowly closed the door behind her, letting it shut with a barely audible click, before making her way down the hall on silent feet. There was a window at the end of the hall, but Beau didn’t trust that one not to be watched by her instructors. If her parents were paying for her to be here, then they had probably paid for her teachers to keep her here too. And, unlike her old tutors, her current ones actually knew how to keep her in line.

But the window in the hall by Expositer Odina’s office straight down into an alley beside the Cobalt Soul. Beau was sure she could jump from there, onto the building beside it, and, if she hadn’t broken anything, make her way out of Zadash before her instructors realized what had happened.

_B, can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer, but I just kind realized I said you’re my friend without even like talking to you about it beforehand and that’s not cool of me so, I was wondering…_

Beau pressed herself against the wall and crept forward, waiting until the voices she had heard were meaningless murmurs in the distance before making her way further.

_Am I your friend?_

It was that question that had convinced Beau to leave in the first place. The letter her parents had sent her definitely helped her make that decision, but once she had shredded it in her anger and then thrown it into the nearest fireplace it was like it had never existed. But that one question, written in a shaky hand and with the paint ink ruined by what Beau was sure were tear drops…

That had followed her all day. Not on her skin - as soon as Jester had asked her that question, it had been hastily scrubbed away, and Beau could only imagine the embarrassment and frustration Jester must have felt as soon as the question dared to exist - but somewhere near the vicinity of her heart. Every time it crossed her mind, her stomach twisted into something Beau wasn’t too familiar with. She felt it when Odina gave her that look that said they were clearly disappointed in her. Or when one of her classmates had expected her to have their back and she hadn’t. Or when she was younger, and her mother had stared down her nose at Beau with distant eyes.

She didn’t have a name for it, but it felt bad and skulked behind her throughout the day, poking its ugly head out from the shadows whenever she let her defenses weaken. Beau wanted to fix that.

So she scurried through the Cobalt Soul, deftly dodging the few instructors and archivists that traversed the halls this late at night.

Sneaking around, trying to escape - Beau had practically mastered that by the time she had been fourteen. The Lionett manor servants, the guards her father had posted throughout the house (particularly outside her bedroom door and beneath her window on the second floor), and the allies her father had in Kamordah along with whoever he had under his thumb - Beau would not have called herself a prisoner in her own city, but the people there definitely watched her with a wary but keen eye, ready to go running back to Mister Lionett and let him know what his delinquent daughter was getting up to at any moment. So Beau had to learn early on how to blend in with the shadows, let them melt into her skin until she was one of them, and hide in plain sight when that didn’t work.

At the Cobalt Soul, it had been a little harder, and she had been caught more than she had ever been in Kamordah. But no one had expected her to be as good at running around unseen as she was, and Beau used that to her advantage now.

Slinking in and out of shadows, Beau made it all the way to the hallway where Expositer Odina’s office was without running into anyone. Without even having a near miss, really.

_Maybe luck is finally on my side…_ she thought even if she didn’t put too much stock in it.

And she was proven right, yet again, when the door to Odina’s office swung inward just as she was making her way across it. Stupidly, Beau froze and slowly turned her head to meet Odina’s stare.

“_Going on an evening stroll, Beauregard_?” they asked her in Halfling.

“_...yes?_”

Odina huffed, and Beau was trying to decide if that was a laugh or another disappointed almost-sigh when they stepped to the side and gestured for Beau to enter their office.

She really had not choice but to follow.

The door swung closed behind her, catching with a _click_ that seemed to echo throughout the spartan room. Odina walked around their desk and sat in the high-backed, plush chair behind it as Beau dragged a chair from the small table and sat in front of her.

Even with the similarities, it was hard to equate this to the numerous times Beau had been sat in front of her teachers in her past.

First, she had never seen her teachers in their pajamas, loose robe sliding off their shoulder and short hair stuck up in all directions.

Second, not a single one of her teachers had bothered pouring her a glass of wine before propping their bares feet up on their desk and taking a deep drink.

And third, and this had Beau relaxing in her seat, none of her teachers had looked at her with such warm pride as Odina did when they placed their goblet onto their desk.

“_Expositer Hira usually makes his rounds at this time_,” Odina told her. “_With the war growing in severity and the Krynn Dynasty making headway in their push west, he’s a bit jumpier than usual, which is to be expected for a man of his age. But that doesn’t mean he’s any less agile, and I’m sure he’d eagerly attack any shadowy figure he sees scaling the walls of the Soul. Give it a few minutes; I’m sure he’ll be on his way soon when he sees some of your classmates trying to sneak out for a night on the town.”_

_“Who was stupid enough to let you in on that?”_

_“The same person who was stupid enough to convince them that there was going to be a show tonight at Night of the Eclipse with free mead and plenty of beautiful performers.”_

_Fuck_.

Odina’s smile widened, looking very much like a cat in a room of very fat mice. “_Beauregard, you’re very clever. But you have much to learn in the ways of trickery and espionage_.”

“_Yeah, okay, you got me_,” Beau admitted, falling limp into her sit and dropping her pack onto the ground. “_So what now? Gonna send me back to my room? Or worse, ship me back off to Kamordah?_”

To her surprise, Odina just laughed. “_Beauregard, if we gave up on every student who tried to leave the Valley Archive, we wouldn’t have any students. As it is, you’re one of the more… tolerable miscreants to pass through the Cobalt Soul, and I wouldn’t let anyone send you back to that joy drain of a city without a fight._

_“I meant what I said that day when we first met. You’re smarter in a way than anyone in Kamordah could ever hope to understand, and you’ve proven to be capable of much, considering you made it to my office without being noticed. But if the Cobalt Soul is not where you wish to be, if you think your skills could be better put to use elsewhere_…” Odina stood and made their way to the window that framed their chair. Nimble fingers hastily unlatched it, and the window swung open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges.

“_There’s a ledge not far beneath my window that makes an excellent handhold before you hit the street, and it’s pretty well hidden from the main road. Much safer than accidentally falling through the roof of the Gott Apothecary, which also happens to be manned by former members of the Cobalt Soul.”_

Beau opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, but nothing came out. Her brain was still trying to comprehend what Odina was telling her.

“_That’s it? You’re just letting me go_?”

Odina nodded and hummed noncommittally as they returned to their desk, finished their wine, and then took Beau’s still full goblet and finished that too.

“_Why?_”

“_Because you’re an adult,_” Odina answered, far more seriously than they ever had, “_and I’m not your warden or your parent._

_“I would love for you stay, to continue you training, so that I could look to you as a fellow Expositer one day. But I want that to be your choice, not my expectations for you. You’ve lived for far too long trying to meet the expectations of people who wanted nothing more than to make you give up who you are, who you have the chance of becoming, so you could become who they want you to be. And that is the last thing I want to do to you, Beauregard. You are too vibrant and too clever, and dimming that light within you would be a heinous crime. So, yes, I’m letting you go so because you have a right to pursue whoever you want to be.”_

Cautiously, with a care Beau did not know Odina was capable of, they reached out and placed their hand over hers. It was warm and calloused and gentle, and Beau resisted the urge to flip her hand over and grasp it with everything she had.

“_I look forward to seeing who you become, Beauregard, if I’m fortunate enough to witness that. If not, then I wish you all the luck in the world._”

_I have to tell them_.

Beau was not sure why that was the first thing that popped into her mind, only that it was right. Slipping her hand out from under Odina’s and ignoring the way her heart clench at the sudden tightness at the corner of their mouth, Beau rolled up the sleeves of her coat and laid her arms out on Odina’s desk. There was just enough light for Beau to see the swooping curves of Jester’s handwriting, and the faint smears where she had wiped away her question earlier.

After a quick nod from Beau, Odina gingerly grabbed her arm, turning it this way and that so she could see every word, every little doodle, every crossed out mistake Jester had inked onto Beau’s skin.

“_I’m going to find Jester_.”

Odina smiled and lowered Beau’s arm back onto the desk. “_Honestl_y,” they said, “_I thought you were leaving because of that letter from your parents. I’m glad I was wrong.”_

_“You don’t think I’m making the wrong decision?”_

“_No.”_ They pulled out a notebook from their desk and flipped it open to the first page. On it, a beautiful illustration of a human woman, grinning vibrantly up at Beau. “_I did the same thing once, and I’ve never regretted it.”_

They pushed it aside and met Beau’s gaze with a soft one of their own.

“_Do you know where you’re going?”_

For the first time that night, Beau smiled. She was fortunate that Jester did not have her same sense of suspicion and had told her that she lived on the Menagerie Coast. Not specifically where, but that was enough information for Beau to start looking. And she told Odina as much with an excitement in her voice that she had not heard in a long time.

It was odd, how light Beau felt, how _warm_. And it was odder how that only ever seemed to happen whenever Jester messaged her.

Beau tried not to think too deeply into that.

“_Well, I hope you find her. I really do.”_ Odina glanced back out the window and chuckled.

“_And it looks like Hira is currently following your classmates, and honestly, you think they’d know how to be quieter by now._” That last part was hissed under their breath without much malice, and Beau tried not to laugh at that. “_Now would probably be your best chance to go_.”

The pair of them got up, Beau with her bag over her shoulder, and Odina guided her with a hand hovering over the small of her back towards the window. Taking note of that ledge they had mentioned and the distance from the ground, Beau hopped up onto the windowsill. She glanced back at Odina before she left. If this was going to be the last time she saw them, she wanted to remember this ridiculous Halfing who had seen an angry girl in a filthy cellar and saw something great.

They were leaning against their desk, glass of wine in hand and moonlight illuminating the dampness at the corners of their eyes. Odina lifted their glass in salute and mouthed one final ‘_Good luck, Beau.’_

Turning away, she wiped at her eyes and jumped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch y'all! And because of that - I have a question for you all: Would you prefer..
> 
> A) A parallel story to this following Jester?
> 
> B) A collection of one-shots at random points throughout their relationship?
> 
> C) Or just leave it as is?


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh, fuck! Oh, shit! My bad!”

There was a hand pressing a napkin to her mouth, and Beau barely noticed. She was too busy staring, transfixed, at the woman in front of her.

Short (shorter than Beau, at least). A soft face and body that Beau’s eyes danced over with about as much subtlety as the woman had skipping into the tavern. Freckles across her blue skin that vanished into the neckline of her cloak and reappeared at the hands hovering anxiously around Beau’s face. Curling horns atop her head that looked she could have mistaken for buns from a distance. Fangs pointing out from her full, purple lips that had Beau a little weak at the knees and glad that she was already sitting.

Behind her, a half-orc with a perpetual nervousness to his brow tried to pull the woman’s hands away. “Jessie, I think you’re doing a bit more harm than good at this point, darling.”

Jester - _Jester_ \- turned from Beau to argue with the half-orc, Fjord. Or maybe make a joke about how stupid Beau looked just sitting there, staring up at her like she hung the moon in the sky, her spat out beer drying on her chest.

Could anyone really blame her though? Here was this beautiful woman who just so happened to share the name that Beau had been talking to ever since she was sixteen.

And yeah, there was the chance that it was just a coincidence. But how many people in the world were named _Jester_ of all things?

A fingertip to her forehead jolted her out of her thoughts, and she started in her seat, nearly knocking her tankard over and spilling what little remained of her beer. She blinked and met a pair of gorgeous violet eyes.

“No, she’s fine!” Jester told Fjord, a laugh in her voice. “Just surprised. I’m super sorry about that, by the way. Do you want me to buy you another one?”

“Uh, no, um, that’s- that’s fine,” she stuttered out. Clearing her throat best as she could and willing the warmth in her cheeks to subside, Beau gave her what she hoped was a convincing, devil-may-care grin. “The beer’s shit here anyways.”

“Good to know,” Fjord murmured, looking down forlornly into his mug.

But Beau’s eyes were on the tiefling woman as she pulled out the chair across from her and sat at the table like she belonged there.

“Do you usually spit out your drink whenever you learn someone’s name?” Jester asked. “Like if I tell you Fjord’s name would you just take a drink and spit it all over the bar?”

“I hope not, otherwise I would’ve been kicked out of a lot more bars in my past.” Not looking away from Jester even as Fjord took a seat and drew her into a conversation, Beau took a long, slow drink of her beer. It wasn’t the worst she’d had, but it wasn’t that great either. Fortunately, it had a new job now other than getting her drunk: let her discreetly watch Jester without being too creepy about it.

Now that the shock was slowly wearing off, Beau could look at better, actually _see _her.

And she was just as beautiful as when Beau first realized who she was staring at.

Windswept and travel-worn, Jester looked like she had been moving around for a bit. Her boots were caked with mud. The hem of her dress was starting to tear a bit, and her gloves were showing more than their fair share of wear. There was a small run in her tights. A bit of sunburn had started to make its face known on the apples of her cheeks. Or that could have been just the general rosiness that seemed to accompany happy people, and Jester seemed like a happy kind of person. Or maybe it was a blush - Beau kind of hoped it was.

“So,” Fjord started, and Beau reluctantly looked away from Jester, “you know our names. Mind sharing yours?”

Beau automatically opened her mouth, her name on the tip of her tongue, when she happened to glance back at Jester.

The tiefling was leaning forward, her chin resting on her hands, and staring at Beau with such an intensity it was like she was committing every dip and plane of Beau’s face to memory. Her eyes flickered from her face, to her bare shoulders, lingering on the wraps around her arms, and back up again over her collarbone and to her face. Her grin widened when she noticed Beau staring back.

For a split second, Beau had half a mind to throw caution to the wind, introduce herself as ‘B’ and see where that led her. And part of her truly wanted to. She had been talking pretty consistently with Jester for almost a decade, had watched the various drawings appear on her skin even longer (even now, partially hidden beneath her arm wraps, there was a doodle of a necklace Jester’s mother had given her before she had “set off”), and the impatience her parents and her instructors had tried to manage and quell was starting to roil and rise within her.

But, in truth, who was Jester? She didn’t know anything about her other than the little glimpses their talks had allowed her to see. For all she knew, Jester was an asshole behind that cheery mask. Or maybe she was a really good actress and would rob Beau in the middle of the night.

Or maybe Beau was naturally suspicious and tended to look at everyone through pessimistic lens.

Either way, Beau decided, it was better if Jester didn’t know. For now.

“Beau.”

She’d tell her at some point.

\----

‘At some point’ happened much sooner than Beau had hoped.

“Beau, do you know what a Soulmark is?” Jester asked her seven months later.

It took every bit of self-control Beau possessed not to re-enact when she and jester first met. Instead, she carefully moved her wine-skin from her mouth, firmly re-corked it, and placed it on the ground far,_ far_ away from her. Despite her mind telling her to run, get away before it’s too late and she reveals something stupid that she wouldn’t be able to take back, Beau turned to Jester.

She was laying on her stomach their shared bed in her night clothes, kicking her legs behind her and bouncing them off the shitty mattress. Her arms were stretched out in front of her, free from her elbow-length gloves and covered in swirling drawing. Among them, curling along the designs, were words: questions, descriptions of how her day had gone, talking about all the cool things she had seen. They were drawn on her skin in golden ink that shimmered in the dim sunlight as the day drew to an end.

Beau was so glad that she had left her arm wraps for the time being. She had planned on taking them off right before bed.

Well, it wouldn’t have been the first time Beau had slept with them on. She doubted it would be the last.

“Kind of,” Beau answered. She discreetly glanced down to make sure none of Jester’s drawings were peaking out above the fabric covering her arms. “Why?”

Jester sighed and rolled over onto her back, holding her arms in the air so that the shimmering ink that Beau liked so much caught what little sunlight was left.

“It’s stupid…”

“Not to me,” Beau replied. _Not if it’s you._ She kept those words locked behind clenched teeth and power of will alone and watched as Jester turned her head, her dark blue curls spilling over her face, and smiled in that way that had Beau’s heart tightening in her chest. It wasn’t the same, overjoyed grin she gave everyone else when they were on the road. Or the obvious mask she would put on in front of strangers, being the jester upon whom everyone’s joys depended. This smile was soft, genuine, tinged with a bit of sadness that Beau could relate to, but that made it all the more _real_.

Beau tightened her grip on the fabric of her pants to keep from reaching out and brushing that hair from Jester’s face and seeing those beautiful violet eyes.

“Come on, Jes - what’s up?”

“Well…. actually, let me show you.” Jester scrambled off the bed to sit by Beau, her bare shoulder brushing against Beau’s as she settled on the ground. Beau hoped Jester did not notice the faint blush making its way onto her cheeks as Jester pushed up her sleeves to show off the beautiful art on her forearm.

It was like the little bits of the sketchbook kept to communicate with the Traveler - small doodles that summed up their day. She could see Fjord’s falchion curling around a roaring field of fire, probably from Caleb. Nott’s mage hand was slowly drawing a pouch from a pocket, a pouch that had been full of gems when they had actually looked at it. She could see Molly’s swords framing a bolt of lightning and Yasha’s Magician’s Judge. Strings of vines and fungi curled around her arm, and if Beau looked closely enough, she could see a hyperrealistic depiction of one of Cadueces’s beetles. Beau could even see bits of herself in there. It was in the throwing knives tucked away in the vines, in the scarves of Molly’s swords, arcing over the wall of fire. It was in the symbol of the Cobalt Soul Jester had painted in the crook of her elbow. It was in her eyes, when Beau finally glanced up to find Jester staring at her so intently.

Always intently.

Beau cleared her throat and dropped her hands from Jester’s arms - _and when had she started to touch her anyway?_

“Those are really good, Jes,” she said, keeping her voice low and unaffected by Jester’s warmth.

But Jester was laughing, and she grabbed Beau’s hand and guided it to her palm. “Not those, Beau. This one.”

Gingerly, stupidly, Beau dragged her fingertips over Jester’s calloused palm and over the words ‘_Morning - B.’_ Next to it, a small heart that Beau had painted with some basic ink she had nabbed from Caleb.

_Fuck_.

The one time she and Jester didn’t share a room, and Beau had to go and be a hopeless romantic.

Fortunately, Beau was just as good as pretending to be oblivious as she was bad at keeping her emotions in check.

“Who’s ‘B?’”

If Jester noticed the tightness in her voice, she was mercifully too focused on ‘B to notice.

“That’s the thing - _I don’t know!”_ Jester flopped over, resting her head in Beau’s lap, with a groan. Immediately, almost instinct at this point, Beau’s hand went to her hair and gingerly started unsnarling the soft, blue locks. “I’ve been talking with them since I was a kid, and I don’t even know who they are. I don’t even know they’re favorite color or anything like that.”

“That sucks.” Beau tried not to look at Jester’s faced as she tilted her head back to stare at the side of Beau’s face. “They haven’t told you anything about themself? Like what they look like or where they’re from or something?”

She chanced a glance at Jester…

And _froze_.

There was something in Jester’s eyes, piercing and pulling at the layers Beau had built up around her own stupid heart, and Beau swallowed hard. She took her hands from Jester’s hair and planted them on the floor behind her, resting her weight on them and letting the lingering pain from a formerly sprained wrist clear her head. But even that couldn’t help as Jester pulled herself up, a hand on either side of Beau’s hips, and pressed herself so close that Beau could feel her breath on her face.

“Beau, are you okay? You look…. _weird_.”

“Uh…” She glanced away, hoping Jester could not see the obvious blush on her cheeks. “Yeah, I’m good. Just, uh, thinking.”

Jester cocked a brow. “About…?”

_How you’ve been the brightest and more beautiful part of my life and you don’t even know it._ “Whoever this ‘B’ person is. I mean, they haven’t even told you enough to try and figure out who they are? Don’t you think that’s kind of a dick move?”

She managed to get her words out without stammering or her voice wavering, but Beau couldn’t even be proud of that with how that _something_ in Jester’s eyes intensified. She felt like she was under interrogation, only that she couldn’t be a contrary asshole to annoy them into leaving her alone. Jester knew what really was under that spiky facade, and her hands, so soft despite their travels and so warm against Beau’s legs, could easily tear that mask apart with nimble fingers.

Just as Beau started feeling her resolve waver, the truth barely on her tongue, Jester leaned back against the bed, and Beau could breathe.

“Not really,” said Jester, twirling a lock of hair around her finger absentmindedly. “Maybe they don’t trust me, which, y’know, makes sense. I’m still a stranger…

“But I’ve told her almost everything. I just thought that maybe they wanted to know me. But I guess not.”

She got to her feet, crawled back up onto the bed, her tail curling tightly around her calf, and laid down on her side and pulled her blanket over her shoulder. Behind her, Beau’s hand reached out and clutched the empty air before falling back onto her lap. Her fingers fiddled with the frayed edges of her arm wraps. As she flicked it down, she noticed the point of one of her throwing knives on her skin. It glinted with a faint hint of gold - the same ink Beau had told Jester she’d liked so long ago.

On Jester’s skin, only Beau’s knives shimmered.

“I’m sure she’s just…. confused.” Her voice was soft, softer than she thought possible. She doesn’t even think Jester heard her. “I don’t think anyone can’t like you, Jes.”

Gathering her thoughts, Beau slowly got to her feet and snuffed out the candle.

“I’m gonna head to the bar and get one more drink,” she told the darkness and the Jester-shaped lump on the bed. “Night, Jes.”

“Night, Beau,” Jester’s voice whispered just as the door clicked shut.

\----

“God. _Damn it!_”

The barmaid, unfazed and cleaning the other mugs, refilled Beau’s as she slammed it down onto the countertop.

“This fucking sucks, man…”

“Do you mean the beer or whatever brought you down here? Because I know at least one’s pretty bad.”

Beside her, Fjord settled onto the stool, apologized at the sight of the barmaid’s firm stare, and ordered a drink for him and for Beau for good measure.

“Fuck _off_, Fjord,” she groaned into her drink. But she leaned into his side as he clapped a hand on her back, between her shoulders.

“But then who’d enable your horrible drinking habits? Jester maybe-”

Beau groaned at the sound of _her_ name and buried her face into his shoulder.

“-or maybe not? Nott might, now I’m thinking about it but-”

“Fjord?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

“Can do.”

For a few blissfully quiet moments, Beau and Fjord sat together, her leaned against his side and his hand moved around to wrap around her shoulders, and just drank. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t push to talk like she knew he wanted her too. He just let her drink and stew for a bit until the words started tumbling out of her mouth on their own.

“Fjord, I think I’m the worst.”

“So do a lot of people, including you sometimes,” he said. “Doesn’t make it true. But what’d you do now that makes you think that?”

Downing the rest of her drink and slamming the mug onto the counter, Beau slowly started unwinding the wraps from around her forearm. Fjord watched with an uncharacteristic patience that Beau was immeasurably grateful for as her hands started to shake, and her slow, careful unwrapping devolved into frantically ripping off the fabric until it was a messy, tangled heap on the bar counter. She laid her arms flat against the rough wood, baring her heart and soul for Fjord to gawk at with his jaw dangling open.

“Um, may I…?” He pointed at the beautiful, swirling designs anxiously.

“Sure.”

His hands, calloused but so gentle that Beau wanted to punch him, lifted her arm into the air. His fingertips were careful not to touch any of the paint, as if his touch would smudge the ink.

“This isn’t, like, a tattoo or anything, right? It’s what I think it is?”

“And what do you think it is, Fjord?” she sighed. “Because I’m not sure that I know anymore.”

Beau pulled her arm from his hand and rewrapped it, ignoring Fjord’s furrowed brows and the way he opened and closed, and opened and closed, his mouth, clearly searching for something to say and coming up with nothing.

“Look,” Beau started, “it’s fine. I’m just… I’m tired and I should-”

“It’s Jester, isn’t it?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Kind of? Plus…” he gently pulled down the fabric until Beau could see the hilt of the falchion. In it, the tiniest dick Beau had ever seen.

“Shit.”

“Yeah… So, what’re you gonna do about it?”

“Nothing.” She took her arm back, readjusted her wraps, and ordered one more drink. All the while, Fjord stared at her like she suggested something mildly heinous, mostly an inconvenience, completely legal but a dick move. It was a look many had sent her, and it still manage to poke at that bit of guilt that lingered in the back of Beau’s mind despite her best attempts.

“Look, man, it’s not that big of a deal-”

Fjord scoffed.

“It isn’t! Besides, Jester’s still over the moon for you, dude, and it’d be really fucked up if I-”

_“_She _was.”_

Beau’s hand froze part way to her drink. Vaguely, she heard Fjord order one more for himself, but it was almost lost over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. Slowly, she turned to face him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fjord met her stare and cocked an amused brow.

“What do you mean ‘_was_?’”

“I mean,” he said so agonizingly slow that Beau wanted to punch him for it. She kept her fists clenched by her side, just in case. “I mean, that Jester _was_ over the moon for me. Don’t know when that changed - and I can’t say I’m not grateful that it did - but she’s got eyes for someone else now. Someone that’s officially now the most oblivious person in this group.”

Beau probably looked like an idiot - eyes wide, mouth open and pointing at herself in disbelief - but she honestly couldn’t care less.

Jester liked her.

Jester _liked_ her.

According to Fjord, Jester was over him and onto her.

“Holy _shit_.”

Fjord hummed a _mmhmm _into his drink, but the corner of his mouth twitched with a grin.

“And you’re not lying?”

“I may not be the wisest person,” he told her, “but Jester isn’t the most subtle, either. She likes you, Beau. She likes you _a lot_. She’s so gone for you it’s not even funny. Has been since, well, uh…”

He flushed and went back to his drink, but Beau caught his arm with a hand on his wrist and forced his drink back onto the bar. The warmth that had been rising in her chest, the warmth she had associated with Jester since that day in that dank cellar, turned cold as Fjord’s cheeks darkened with embarrassment and his eyes bounced around the room, desperately searching for anyone or thing to protect him from whatever expression was on Beau’s face.

Because there was something in the back of her mind, a brief moment where Jester’s eyes had stayed for far too long on her arms, for Beau to just let it go. In the moment, she had been blinded by the fact that Jester was actually right in front of her. Now, the moment came back with such sharp clarity it almost hurt.

And if it meant what she thought it meant, then Beau was fucked.

“Since when, Fjord?”

He turned his head and muttered off to the side, but Beau still caught it.

Dropping his hand, Beau slapped a gold onto the back and sprinted back upstairs.

\----

Jester wasn’t sleeping.

Good news for Beau’s impatience, and bad news for her self-consciousness.

_‘What if she’s pissed that I just brushed her off all this time_?’ Beau had asked herself as she took the stairs two at a time. _‘Oh shit, what if she thinks I’m just playing her and I don’t like her at all. Does she even know that I know? Oh fucking shit, God damn it.’_

And those thoughts only got louder when she saw Jester sitting up, staring forlornly at her arm in the dim candle light. Her head shot up when Beau practically kicked the door open, and Beau’s heart constricted at the obvious tear tracks on her round cheeks.

“Beau-?”

She charged back out of the room.

Her words were caught in her throat, a jumbled mess of feelings and thoughts and words that couldn’t come together no matter how hard she tried. Beau was never good with words to start with, had always been a woman of action, so she did what she knew she could do best. She acted first, thought later.

So she barely noticed when Caleb yelped and called after her as she took the shitty ink he knew he kept in his pack for a final resort when he didn’t have any of the fancy stuff. She’d buy him more, and significantly better quality, later. This was important.

When she got back to the room, Jester was staring at her with obvious confusion on her face. Beau did not look at her as she stripped herself of her arm wrappings and her belt. Sliding into bed beside an uncharacteristically quiet Jester, Beau dipped her finger into the ink and started to paint.

It was not nearly as beautiful as Jester’s drawings. The ink ran, she smudged it a few times when she tried to add a few details, and too be honest Beau just didn’t have the same passion and skill for art that Jester had developed over so many years. But she had to do this. Even if she made a fool of herself, she owed this to Jester, to herself, to see this through to whatever end was waiting for her.

And pressed against her side in the small bed, Jester watched this all happen. Her face cycled through confusion, disbelief, a deep sadness, and then finally settled on a watery smile as Beau drew a crude drawing of a tiefling and a human holding hands underneath a rainbow and surrounded by lopsided hearts.

Just as she was about to start writing everything that was in her head, no matter how ridiculous and illegible it would have been, a blue hand stopped her frantic doodling. Another cupped her chin and lifted her face, and Beau sucked in a sharp breath at the warm, _fond _look on Jester’s face.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked her in a small voice, practically a whisper.

“I didn’t know how. I thought that maybe…” She thought back to the first time she had met Jester. She had been all billowing skirts and boisterous laughs and smiling so brightly it put the sun to shame. And Beau had brushed that aside, safe in knowledge that very few people were actually how they first appeared. She thought Jester could have been a con artist, a shitty trickster that didn’t give a fuck about other people, maybe just along for the ride until she found something better and then left her and Fjord behind.

Beau wished she had gone with her first thought - that there was one true good in the world, and it was named Jester Lavorre. It would have saved her a lot of heartache the last few months.

“I was stupid.”

“Yeah,” Jester said, smiling, “you were. Are you still stupid?”

“I hope not.”

“Then can I kiss you?”

Beau surged forward, one hand curled around the back of Jester’s neck, and kissed her hard.

It was messy - Jester had clearly never kissed anyone before- but enthusiastic, and Beau melted into Jester’s touch as her warm hands pressed into the small of her back, molding her against Jester’s front.

When they finally separated, breathing hard and foreheads pressed together, Jester glanced down and wrinkled her nose. Beau was to kiss that little furrow in her brow away when Jester pushed her away, and she finally saw what had Jester looking so adorably angry and nearly rolled off the bed, laughing.

Beau promised she’d buy Jester a new pair of non-ink stained pajamas and pulled her into another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is! The final chapter - I apologize for the wait, and I hope this made up for it!
> 
> Based on the question I asked last chapter, it seems a lot of you are interested in the collection of one shots, so I'm going to get started on that as soon as I am able to. HOWEVER, I'm also working on a couple more things so it may be a while before the first one is posted.
> 
> I was not expecting this chapter to be as long as it was OR formatted the way it was, but that's just the way it goes sometimes, isn't it? You have a plan and it turns out you were wrong. At the end, though, I'm happy with how this turned out.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos and lovely reviews!


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